


air, perfume, hurricane

by whateverliesunsaid



Series: pictured: love in the complex world of corporative relations [4]
Category: Succession (TV 2018)
Genre: Business Trip, Deleted Scenes, F/M, Slow Burn, love as a kind of kinship, they're oblivious and it's annoying
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-22
Updated: 2020-11-22
Packaged: 2021-03-09 21:15:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,682
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27662560
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whateverliesunsaid/pseuds/whateverliesunsaid
Summary: Out of all the things people knew about Gerri, the general counsel, there was a world they didn’t. Including her kinship with Roman Roy, the trouble making boy prince. In addition, her love for beautiful things.Which weren’t completely dissociated facts when she really thought about it.
Relationships: Gerri Kellman/Roman "Romulus" Roy
Series: pictured: love in the complex world of corporative relations [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2112606
Comments: 6
Kudos: 26





	air, perfume, hurricane

**ACT 1: Air.**

“Don’t we have anything to do around here?” he mutters for what feels like the hundredth time in as many hours, which is simply not factual even if his brain would say it is so.

“Roman…” she responds from behind her notebook, with the lights reflecting on her reading glasses for too many hours at a time.

The jet rumbles softly and steadily around them, coursing through the air to get them to Dubai in time for a meeting and then back in time for another. Roman can’t remember another time in his life where he felt as though everything was simply time spent between one cataclysm and the next, nor could he see a future where that wasn’t the case. If anything, he could see himself dabbling between this and that precariously forever. Rushing back and forth until he breaks down by overuse, like a doll played with too much, all the precious threads fraying to expose white filling.

“I know, I know, I can’t live a rockstar lifestyle all the time and go from one thing to the next— maybe I should try mindfulness or sleeping pills!”

She shoots him a glance that is equal parts annoyed to no end and bemused beyond her better judgement, which makes him feel better about it all and shuts him up in his stead all the same.

It almost annoys him, sometimes, how Gerri can just stay still for hours at a time. Focused, with her eyes betraying her attention every now and again when he notices her gaze settled upon him, curious and waiting. Except that, because it’s Gerri, it doesn’t annoy him at all. Which is a weird thing to know and not know what to do it, so he keeps it stored away in the corner of his mind that if he could do it forever, he would want to do this with her.

He starts climbing over the empty seats behind her from the back to the front where she sits when he continues: “Gerri, I can’t do this. I’m going to lose my mind. How long until we get off this thing again?”

She groans, checking the hour in her screen and stretches her arms out, as if she just figured out how stiff her body is. “Only 2 more hours to go, Ro.”

He plops himself down in the seat next to her, his hair looking like a nest of birds and red-eyed to the point where he almost looks like a classic hero. Byronic. Or maybe even like a Caravaggio model— Dionysius reborn. “You should take a nap.” she advises.

He doesn’t dismiss her, only peers down into her screen curiously instead: “What are you going to do until then?”

“I _was_ finishing a report for the board but I think I’m done.” her words come out slowly, not quite calculated only hard to come by and that’s when he notices the tiredness behind her own eyes. “Might shut my eyes for a little as well.”

“Okay then.” he concedes, watching her close her notebook. “My shoulder is a great pillow, just so you know.”

“Very funny.” she doesn’t laugh, but there’s a lift at the corner of her lips that make him want so bad to make her laugh for real. She stretches herself, lifting her arms up until it touches the bottom of the hand-baggage’s storage and settles back down, laying her head on the comfortable headrest right behind her head, her eyes already closed when it makes contact. Still, she continues: “ _Rest_.”

He presses a button besides him and lowers them a little, dims the lights.

Roman doesn’t dare look for a blanket, lest the moment is over and he’s relegated to napping all the way across when the thought of staying where he is makes his fingertips buzz. He closes his own eyes, trying very hard not to overthink and freak himself out, and only realizes he’s fallen asleep at all when the turbulence disrupts his dream and he finds her head heavy in his shoulder, her legs tucked underneath her coat, her warm hand on top of his.

He can’t move, even though he desperately wants to get up and start moving again, so he starts counting her breaths like sheep, using all the brain space he can muster to figure out what are the scents in her signature perfume, after all.

**ACT 2: Perfume.**

The office she’s given for the two days they’re supposed to stay there is soulless and well decorated at once: it could be anyone’s. But it isn’t her’s, or at least it isn’t until she’s given it her few personal touches that she brings with herself everywhere.

In the corporate world, this is almost looked down upon. The necessity to have a home at all is a weakness of the greatest kind but after 30 years in the business, Gerri allows herself some leeway to be happy. She goes around and puts her few personal items in specific, deliberate places. Puts a small framed picture of her family up behind her. It’s not that she’s personality-less, as some would say, she’s a minimalist.

She’s a professional and must continue as such.

*

She is a survivor in a business salivating to spit her out for good— as it has been for a long, long time.

The second a woman stopped being the pretty new thing in the office, in her days, she was on thin ice and relied only on her best behavior to keep on climbing the ladder. The farther up she made, however, she was more and more defined by the worse of her accomplishments. For every great idea she had pitched, Gerri was more defined by being a reliable fly on the wall. Failure was not an option; and breaking the glass ceiling to win, _really_ win, was a harder course of action. When it came down to it, sometimes her life was a waiting game.

Which never meant life could not be pleasurable, only that it had to be able to withstand time. Out of all the things people knew about Gerri, the general counsel, there was a world they didn’t. Including her kinship with Roman Roy, the trouble making boy prince. In addition, her love for beautiful things.

Which weren’t completely dissociated facts when she really thought about it.

Except that she never had the time to consider these at large, anyways, so it was largely inconsequential. She tucked her interior perfume, the same understated comfortable one she used in every office she called her own when Roman peeked into the room, “Ready?”

“Just a second.”

“Hm. How does this place smell the same as your New York office?”

She laughs. “That’s just me, I guess.”

She picks her iPad and trails out the door he keeps open for her and he tries very hard not to think about what exactly makes him want to buy whatever the source of it is for himself when he follows her into the meeting.

*****

When they walked out victorious of their final meeting, exchanging proud looks and tight, professional smiles and handshakes with their peers, it takes a lot of self-control not to hold his arm, or his hand, or anything that might give their occasional intimacy away.

It doesn’t mean that she doesn’t want to sit him pretty in her offices like a statue.

Another of Gerri’s pretty things.

**ACT 3: Hurricane.**

It doesn’t come as a surprise to her when the report of their success doesn’t make great waves, only settles the storms a little. It cuts, however, at Roman who spits fire in her office, laying down on her couch like he owns the place (one day, if he’s very lucky…) his hands shooting up over the top so she can see the fire in his gestures, if his words and tone are not enough clues to go bye.

He knows, surely he knows, that the corporate world isn’t a puzzle you solve once, or a maze you figure the way out. No, there’s only further in, further attached until you can’t find your way out without a string and a helping hand.

A cheat.

“We killed it and they talk about it like it was easy!” he huffs and she sighs, walking over to the sofa, tapping his legs so he knows to make space for her.

He pulls his legs in and hugs them for a minute, unaware even of how small he looks when he folds himself like that. She sits quietly, waiting for the end of his tirade, and finds herself shocked by his legs stretching themselves over her lap instead, trapping her in.

“I want to see them do it instead!” he continues, unshaken. “Tell me it’s easy then!”

She smiles a little at him, satiating her desire to touch his hair by spreading her hand on the fabric of his pants, dragging her fingertips up and down near his ankle. “The job is to keep going, rockstar.”

He’s quiet for a minute, as if he’s thinking her words through. “Have you never gotten praised for the work you did when you did it?”

Straight to the bullseye.

She shakes her head, a sardonic smile lifting the corner of her lips just for him. “Nope. Not at all, really. The pay is too good, praise is not in the benefits package, sorry.”

“They should, Ger.” It surprises her, how sincere he is. His hand reaches for the back of his neck when he continues, looking away from her. “This place would burn and crash without you. Don’t tell the investors.” at that, she laughs and he feels so satisfied it’s a miracle his heart doesn’t break out of his chest. He peers back at her in time to see it linger when she speaks again:

“Thank you. It's our secret.”

“Sure, as long as it's sexy. And you’re welcome, molewoman.”

*

Surely this is not the greatest secret they keep, but he’s happy there’s a pile being created somewhere in the corner of their minds.


End file.
